This collage is one of series completed in 1977 depicting scenes from Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey. Romare Bearden’s composition mimics the Italian painter Bernardino Pintoricchio’s early-16th-century painting of Odysseus returning home after the Trojan War. However, Bearden’s reinterpretation moves the scene to the West African country of Benin. By changing the ethnicity of the characters, Bearden made the story more accessible to minority audiences. He said of the series, “It is universal. So if a child in Benin or in Louisiana . . . sees my paintings of Odysseus, he can understand the myth better.”